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STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL AND 
MODERN HISTORY 




AN OLU-FASHIONEU CIDER-MILL. 



Studies in Medieval and 
Modern History 



BY 

FRANKLIN R HEAD 



Magna est Veritas ei prevalebit 

The inquiry of truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it; the 
knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, 
which is the enjoying of it — is the sovereign good of human nature 

— FRANCIS BACON 



CHICAGO 
PRIVATELY PRINTED 



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M It S73 



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9- 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. Dante's Boodling, and its Influ- 
ence UPON HIS Work, ... 9 

II. Some Methods of Browning, as 
Illustrated by the Poem of 
Ivan Ivanovitch, .... 57 

III. Lines to Lake Geneva, ... 77 

IV. Address Delivered at the Un- 

veiling OF THE HaYMARKET 

Monument, 85 



DANTE'S BOODLING, AND ITS IN- 
FLUENCE UPON HIS WORK 



DANTE'S BOODLING, AND ITS IN- 
FLUENCE UPON HIS WORK 

In the ranks of the great poets, three men 
stand conspicuous and alone. With their heads 
among the stars, to their serene and lonely 
height no others may venture to climb. By 
the most enduring and final of tests, a constant- 
ly growing appreciation of their work, centuries 
after their times and ages have passed away. 
Homer, Shakespeare and Dante seem assured of 
a world-embracing and undying fame. 

No three men can be named more utterly un- 
like. Each, in a large measure, was the product 
of his age and of his environment, acting upon a 
genius, heaven-born, which once perhaps in a 
millennium is sent among men. 

Homer, whom Dante characterizes as 

"The monarch of sublimest thought 
Who, o'er the others like an eagle sails," 
9 



lO 

sings to us of the far-away childhood of the race. 
His men and women are people of simple mo- 
tives, simple theories of life and narrow experi- 
ences. The gods of the mountains, the streams, 
and the forests, dowered with all human powers 
and weaknesses, were as real as Helen or Aga- 
memnon or the white-armed Nausicaa. An un- 
usual dream was as the voice of God, and the 
flight of a flock of birds might change the des- 
tiny of a nation. Diplomacy in its modern 
sense was unknown, and the thoughts, motives, 
and passions of the men of his age are more 
open to us than those of our everyday neigh- 
bors. 

Shakespeare gives us not alone a graphic pic- 
ture of the age of Elizabeth, but an embodiment 
of all the wisdom which had survived from all 
the foregone ages. Every human passion found 
in all sorts and conditions of men is to him as 
an open book. He holds the mirror up to all 
the variant moods of nature. He is the supreme 
poet of humanity. He is the master of language, 
which, to him, is plastic as clay in the potter's 
hands. At his bidding, it sings soft and sweet 



as the harp of ^olus, or is marshaled in periods 
resonant as the Psalms of David, or majestic as 
the voice of the multitudinous sea. 

Dante occupies a much narrower field. While 
the writings of Shakespeare and Homer are lucid 
and easily understood, his are pervaded by the 
vague, mysterious, and incomprehensible meta- 
physics and the subtle scholasticisms of his age. 
His admirers find in many passages of his writ- 
ings the double and concealed meanings, which 
the Browning students of our day find in Bor- 
dello. While for his time he had traveled wide- 
ly and had met the scholars and poets of civilized 
Europe, yet such intercourse seems in a general 
way to have but little broadened his horizon, 
and for him the little commune of Florence was 
his world. For this reason, his general scheme 
of the life after death, as set forth in the Divine 
Comedy, would not be for a moment tolerated 
in our days of the geographical distribution of 
official patronage. To the people of Florence, 
a town no larger than Burlington or Milwaukee, 
he assigns nearly all the prominent positions in 
Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. He preached the 



12 

gospel of immeasurable and infinite hate, as well 
as of exquisite and undying love. But he illu- 
mines the pages of the Divine Comedy with the 
white light of perhaps the most exquisite poetic 
fancy yet vouchsafed to man. He pillories all 
grades of evil-doers with a pen which holds 
them up to the execration of men through all 
the ages. But amid all the horrors of the In- 
ferno, through its chorus of hopeless shrieks and 
groans of never-ending agony, through the fear- 
ful but not hopeless sorrows of Purgatory, 
through Limbo, where without hope, they ever 
live in longing, forever dying but never dead, 
as well as through the shining abodes of the 
blest, he walks, tranquil and serene, and scatters 
the flowers of an imagination at once chastened 
and sublime through all the stages of his won- 
derful journey. Amidst the vivid pictures of a 
class of sinners, smoking in pockets of redhot 
rock, amidst another class, writhing in the em- 
brace of poisonous serpents, biting and bitten, 
men shrinking into snakes, and snakes expand- 
ing into men, gleams some enchanting sentence, 
brightening the scenes of immeasurable horror 



13 

with that ideal light which never was on sea or 
land. His outgrown theology, everywhere con- 
spicuous, is that of a bygone and buried age, but 
despite this perishing of what he considered the 
foundation and framework of his mighty drama, 
the artist in this monarch in the poets' realm 
still assures him wide and loving audience. He 
was the founder of Italian literature. He was 
on more familiar terms with Heaven than any 
of his predecessors, and in an age when the 
problems of a future life, by reason of the priest- 
hood including the great bulk of educated men, 
were vastly more discussed than mere temporali- 
ties, and in considering these problems, the 
thought and speech of men dwelt especially upon 
the punishments of the future life: less upon the 
happiness to be gained than upon the torments 
to be escaped beyond the veil, his selection of a 
theme and his treatment of it were entirely 
natural. 

Dante was one of the early instances of the 
scholar in politics. He was a man of wide and 
profound learning, and lived in Florence at a 
period of wonderful artistic and literary activ- 



14 
ity. Poets sung in her palaces, and artists 
garnished her cathedrals. The politics of Flor- 
ence, to a student of our day, is an inscrutable 
mystery. By a careful reading of the various 
histories of Florence, a larger stock of misin- 
formation can be accumulated than by any other 
method. Voltaire says, " All parties loved lib- 
erty and did their best to destroy her." We 
become familiar with the names of the Guelfs, 
the Ghibbelines, the Bianchi, and the Neri. 
Florence prided herself on being an indepen- 
dent city, but recognized the right, either of the 
Pope or the German Emperor, to act with 
authority as an arbitrator in case of internal 
dissensions. As a general rule, the Guelfs and 
Bianchi preferred the authority of the Pope, 
while the Ghibbelines and Neri chose that of 
the German Emperor. Yet, as circumstances 
changed, each of these parties is to be found on 
either side of every possible political question. 
In early life Dante was a Guelf, and as such 
rose to political preferment. His love for Flor- 
ence was one of the intensest passions of his 
life, yet after his banishment, he united with 



IS 

the exiled imperialists in urging the German 
Emperor to attack and conquer the city. Their 
clamor was, Let Florence perish, let her treasures 
be destroyed, let the Arno flow onward to the 
sea, red with the costliest blood of the land, so 
that her exiles may again dwell within her 
walls. 

In Florence itself, both during, before, and 
after the age of Dante, there raged between the 
different parties an incessant strife, which seems 
the absolute summit of unreason. As the bal- 
ance of power changed, the prominent members 
of the defeated party were occasionally exe- 
cuted or exiled, and their property confiscated. 
From the standpoint of to-day, this perpetual 
warfare appears as causeless as would be a war 
between red-haired and black-haired men, or 
the denizens of one side of a street against 
those of the other side. Despite, however, this 
endless turmoil, upon one point all were agreed, 
their love for, and devotion to their beloved 
Florence. While daily contests made the streets 
perilous to the passer-by, and the houses of 
leaders out of power were torn down by mobs, 



i6 

the work upon the cathedral of San Giovanni 
went steadily on, and all parties united in heap- 
ing honors upon the artists, architects, and men 
of letters, whose names and work make the age 
illustrious. From contemporaneous histories, it 
would appear that, as soon as the army of 
skilled artisans and artists had completed their 
twelve-hour day's work upon the cathedral of 
Saint John, the Duomo, or the Campanile, they 
went, to a man, upon the warpath against 
whomever they met upon the streets, and killed 
or were killed, maimed or crippled, until the 
dawn of another divine Italian morning, when 
those who survived again resumed their labors, 
striving with a love and civic devotion, which 
knew no bounds or parallel, that Florence might 
be the center and soul of the world's artistic 
life. 

Amid such surroundings, Dante was born and 
educated, and became a partisan in city politics, 
and after having successfully managed certain 
of its affairs of a diplomatic nature, was ulti- 
mately made one of the six Priors who gov- 
erned the city. These six Priors had virtually 



I? 

the entire management of its affairs, even more 
so than the boards of aldermen of modern 
times, since no mayor had the veto power over 
their decisions. He was of the Guelf faction, 
and a subsequent election having resulted in the 
triumph of the Ghibbelines, he was relegated to 
private life. The story of his banishment soon 
after is familiar to all, and is usually considered 
a purely political act. Byron's lines in "Childe 
Harold" represent, doubtless, the usual opinion 
upon the matter. 

" Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar 
Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore; 
Thy factions, in their worse than civil war, 
Proscribed the bard whose name forevermore 
Their children's children would in vain adore. 
With the remorse of ages; and the crown, 
Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore, 
Upon a far and foreign soil had grown. 
His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled, not thine 
own. 

And Santa Croc\e wants their mighty dust, 
Yet for this want more noted, as of yore. 
Than Csesar's pageant, shorn of Brutus's bust, 
Did but of Rome's best son remind her more: 



i8 

Happier Ravenna! On thy hoary shore, 
Fortress of falling empire! honored sleeps 
The immortal exile. Arqua, too, her store 
Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps, 
While Florence vainly begs her banished dead and 
weeps." 

I have recently made a careful study of the 
documentary evidence in the indictment and 
trial of Dante, resulting in his banishment, 
which indicates that other than political offenses 
were charged against him. The painstaking 
efforts of the students of Dante have unearthed 
many points of interest in his career, and the 
quotations which follow, from the documents 
bearing upon his exile, are taken from the pub- 
lications of the German and American Dante 
societies. The documents are in a somewhat 
barbarous Latin tongue, translations from which 
I give. The first decree is dated in January, 
1302. Others beside Dante are embraced in its 
provisions. I give the parts which bear spe- 
cifically upon the poet. 

The decree is very voluminous, exceeding in 
legal verbiage almost any similar document of 



19 

our own time, and condemns to fine and ban- 
ishment five persons. The first part of the 
decree, after the formal opening, imposes sen- 
tences separately upon one Gherardino, and 
may, therefore, be omitted. The decree con- 
siderably condensed, is as follows: 

In the name of the Lord, Amen. 
This is the decree or condemning sen- 
tence lately made and promulgated by 
the noble and powerful Lord Cante de 
Gabrielle de Eugebio, honorable Podesta 
of the City of Florence, upon the ex- 
cesses and crimes written below against 
the men and persons also mentioned. 
According to the investigations of the 
discreet and sapient Lord Paulus de 
Eugebio, Judge to the Lord Podesta, 
appointed to the office over barratry, un- 
just extortions and illicit lucre, and by 
the will and counsel of other judges of 
the same Podesta, and written down by 
me, Bonora de Pregio, notary and offi- 
cial to the aforesaid Lord Podesta, and 
of the Commonwealth of Florence to the 
same office duly appointed. In the cur- 
rent year of our Lord, 1302, Roman In- 
diction XV, his holiness Pope Boniface 
VIII, reigning. We, Cante Podesta, as 
stated above, publish the condemning 
sentences in manner following:: 



Against Lord Palermius de Alovetis, 
Dante Alleghieri, 
Lippo Bacchus, and 
Orlanduccio Orlandi, 
against whom has been had the inquisi- 
tion of our own office upon information 
which has come to our ears, and to the 
knowledge of our Court, and also through 
public report, whether these people were 
in the office of Prior, or otherwise, prov- 
ing that these people had been guilty of 
bribery, of receiving illicit lucre and of 
exorbitant extortions in money, or in 
goods, either by themselves, or through 
other parties, in the matter of the elec- 
tion of Priors in the Commune of Flor- 
ence, or for the passing of ordinances, 
or for concessions sought to be obtained, 
and for obtaining from the Treasury of 
Florence, above what is allowed by the 
ordinances of the Commonwealth. Also 
because they had been guilty of fraud, 
and of receiving bribes in affairs relating 
to the Sovereign Pontiff, to the arrival of 
King Charles, and to the House of 
Guelfs, and had plotted for the expul- 
sion from the state of Pistori of those 
called Nigri, faithful followers of the 
Holy Roman Church, and for the sever- 
ing of the compact between said state 
and the Commune of Florence. 

Therefore, Lord Palermius, Dante, 
Orlanduccio, and Lippo, having been 



legally cited and required through the 
nuncio of the State of Florence, that 
within a certain time, now elapsed, they 
should appear before us and our Court, 
for the purpose of defending and excul- 
pating themselves from the inquisition 
set forth, and they not having appeared, 
but the rather suffered themselves to be 
put in ban of the Commonwealth, each 
has been fined by Duccio Francisci, Pub- 
lic Finer, in the sum of 5,000 small gold 
florins, which fine they have incurred by 
absenting themselves contumaciously, all 
of which appears in extenso in the 
records of our Court. 

Be it, therefore, ordained, that each of 
the parties named being proved guilty, 
in order that they may receive the fruit 
of the harvest sown, according to the 
quality of the seed, and may have retri- 
bution according to their deserts, we do 
by these writings sententially condemn 
in 5,000 small gold florins by weight for 
each, to be paid to the Treasury of the 
State of Florence, and farther that they 
restore the things illegally extorted to 
those legally proving it. And that, if 
they do not pay the amounts within the 
third day from this sentence, the goods 
of any one not paying shall be confis- 
cated and destroyed and remain in the 
State. And if they pay the aforesaid 
condemnation, either themselves or by 



22 

Others, not the less shall any one so pay- 
ing remain without the Province of Tus- 
cany for two years. And in order that 
the memory of the crimes of Palermius, 
Dante, Lippo and Orlanduccio be per- 
petual, it is decreed that their names be 
inscribed in the records of the people of 
Florence as forgers, falsifiers, barrators 
and impostors, and that never hereafter 
can any of them hold office of trust or 
receive any privileges from the Common- 
wealth of Florence, the fine being paid 
or not. * 

This decree was made in January, 1302. In 
the month of March following another decree 
issued from the same Court, which is in sub- 
stance much like the first, but which, after re- 
citing that Dante, with others, had, upon suffi- 
cient evidence, been found guilty of barratry, 
bribery, extortions, and of receiving illicit lucre, 
and having been fined and the fine not having 
been paid, and that Dante, with others, having 
been silent as to the crimes charged, and there- 
fore having virtually confessed his guilt, there- 
fore the Court, by additional decree, adjudges 
that should he ever again appear within the ter- 

*See Appendix. 



23 

ritory of the Commonwealth of Florence, he 
shall be consumed by fire until he die.* 

In the year 1311, nine years after the first 
sentence, the German Emperor was marching 
toward Italy with a large army, and as he had 
been continually appealed to by the different 
warring factions in Florence to settle their end- 
less quarrels, he issued an order that an amnesty 
be granted to all persons exiled by either party, 
and the Florentines, fearful of an attack upon 
their city in case of disobedience, granted par- 
don to the most of the exiles, but made an ex- 
ception in the case of Dante, and some few 
others by name, on the ground that their crimes 
against the Commonwealth were considered too 
great for condonation. 

In 1315, thirteen years after the first sentence, 
Dante having petitioned, as often before, for the 
privilege of returning to the city, the authorities 
issued another decree, in which it was ordered 
that, in view of his many evil deeds against the 
Commonwealth, in case he should ever return to 

*See Appendix. 



24 

the city, he should be at once taken to the place 
of justice and there beheaded. 

This, so far as I have been able to ascertain, 
is the last oiificial utterance by the authorities of 
Florence, and, as is well known, he never re- 
turned to the city. 

It will be recalled that in the first decree, it is 
stated that the evidence upon which the con- 
viction of the crimes charged was based appears 
in extenso upon the records of the Court. Such 
records, however, have never been discovered in 
Florence by the many Dante commentators, and 
only a part of such evidence can thus far be 
found at all. The only light upon the detailed 
charges and evidence against Dante may be 
found in certain documents in the Vatican 
library, and these are evidently fragmentary. 
As appears by these papers, one of the witnesses 
testifying was one Michel Mol'loni. His evi- 
dence in substance was that he was the proprie- 
tor of a wine store in the district of Saint Peter 
the Great, where Dante resided; that his wine 
rooms were a place of great resort, and among 
the frequenters was Dante; that many of his 



25 

poorer patrons owed him money, which, with 
his deeds of charity to the poor upon Christmas 
and other chief holidays of the Church, made 
him a man of wide influence in the politics of 
Florence; that in the year A.D. 1300, Dante 
told him that he had been urged by his friends 
to allow the use of his name as a candidate for 
the ofifice of Prior; that, upon such urging, he 
had a desire to be chosen as one of the six Priors 
of Florence, and asked his (Mol'loni's) influence 
to obtain such office, promising him a substan- 
tial reward in case of his election; that the wit- 
ness so used his influence, which, with some 
money furnished by Dante and the family of his 
wife, greatly aided in his election; that Dante 
being thus elected, he (Mol'loni) called upon 
him for his promised reward, and Dante directed 
witness to put in a bid for certain quantities of 
marble needed for the Cathedral or Baptistry of 
San Giovanni, at a price named by Dante, which 
was nearly double the price offered by other bid- 
ders; that Dante so managed matters, that wit- 
ness was awarded the contract, the lower bids 
being rejected for informality or unsatisfactory 



26 

quality of the marble, although the marble was 
the same offered by the witness; that witness 
furnished such marble, making a profit thereon 
of 17,000 florins, one-half of which he paid to 
Dante, as by their agreement. 

Another witness was Alberti Ristori, who testi- 
fied that for many years he had farmed the taxes 
of six districts of Florence and had been author- 
ized by the various Boards of Priors to receive 
for his services and for advancing money when 
needed, ten per cent, to be collected by him 
above the amount assessed by the officers of the 
Commonwealth; that soon after the election of 
Dante to the Priorate, he sent for witness and 
told him that the six districts of Florence here- 
tofore farmed by him were controlled by said 
Dante, and he was authorized by said Dante to 
add fifteen per cent instead of ten per cent to 
the tax levy, which he did, thereby making an 
extra profit of 12,000 florins, one-half of which 
he gave to Dante, 

Another witness was Gherardinum Diodati, 
who testified that he was a plasterer by trade; 
that he was introduced to Dante by Michel Mol ' - 



27 

loni, and that he plastered much of the interior 
of the Baptistry during the Priorate of Dante; 
that he was to be paid two florins per square 
braccio for finished work, and that he plastered 
1,200 square braccia by actual measurement, but 
that, by direction of Dante, he made a claim for 
2,015 square braccia, which claim was audited 
and allowed by said Dante, whereby witness re- 
ceived 1,630 florins in excess of his just due, 
1,000 florins of which he gave Dante and Mol'- 
loni, as was arranged between them. 

Another witness was Lapum Ammuniti, who 
testified that he had a contract for filling a cer- 
tain tract of marshy land adjoining the river 
Arno to the height of six braccia, to make it 
safe from floods and suitable for habitations; 
that he was to be paid one florin per cubic 
braccio for such filling by a contract made be- 
fore the Priorate of Dante; that his work was 
finished and the work paid for during Dante's 
term of office; that he was entitled to be paid 
for 11,890 cubic braccia of filling, but that, at 
Dante's request, he made a claim for 19,890 
cubic braccia, which was certified as correct by 



28 

Dante, whereby witness received an excess of 
8,000 florins, one-half of which he gave to Dante, 
as had been agreed. 

Another witness was Gregorius Del Sarto, who 
testified that he had a contract for the excava- 
tion of the large main sewer of the city of Flor- 
ence at a certain price per cubic braccio for dirt 
or gravel, and a certain price, six times as great, 
where the excavation was in rock; that his work 
was finished during the Priorate of Dante; that in 
the whole excavation but 1,100 cubic braccia of 
rock-work was encountered; that, at the request 
of Dante and Michel Mol'loni, he presented 
no claim for his work until it was entirely com- 
pleted and covered in so that it would be diffi- 
cult to measure the part cut in the rock; that, 
when this was done at Dante's request, he made 
a claim for 2,900 cubic braccia of rock-work, 
and received therefor, his claim having been 
audited and approved by Dante, as Prior, the 
sum of 21,600 florins in excess of what was his 
just due, 7,000 florins of which was received by 
Dante as his share, as agreed between them — 
and an equal amount by Mol'loni. 



29 

Each of the witnesses quoted stated, in his 
own justification, that Dante had told him that 
he, Dante, was not a rich man; that he desired 
to do great things for Florence, in the way of 
beautiful buildings and gifts to the poor, and 
that this was the method by which he wished to 
provide himself with money for the beautifying 
of his beloved Florence. 

The Vatican manuscripts indicate that there 
were four other witnesses examined, but the 
manuscripts are so defaced as to be in parts 
wholly illegible and no connected meaning can 
be drawn from them. Detached words, how- 
ever, indicate that, in one case, the witness had 
paid to Dante money for a certain franchise as 
to some method of river transportation, and in 
the case of another witness, that he had paid 
money for a monopoly of selling within the city 
limits the olive oil from the surrounding country. 

In making up our judgment as to the guilt 
or innocence of Dante, from the decrees and 
testimony offered, we are handicapped by the 
fact that we have heard the evidence in but one 
side of the case, but there seems to be no evi- 



3° 

dence from contemporaneous records that Dante 
ever denied his guilt or endeavored to prove his 
innocence. Another fact seems to confirm the 
presumption of his guilt: he lived in a time of 
marvelous artistic and literary activity in Flor- 
ence. The people, while split into factions and 
constantly warring among themselves, Avere a 
unit in their enthusiastic devotion to their artists 
and men of letters. At the date of Dante's ban- 
ishment, he had written and circulated the 
" Vita Nuova," a work of promise rather than in 
itself of permanent value, but long before the 
last decree of 131 5, condemning him to death 
by beheading in the place of justice, in case he 
ever again entered the city of Florence, he had 
written and circulated a large part of the Divine 
Comedy, .and was widely recognized as the 
greatest of Italian poets — as the man who would 
make illustrious his nation and his age. When 
this is considered in connection with the fact 
that seemingly every Florentine hastened to do 
homage to all those whose life and works would 
add to the prestige and glory of Florence, it 
seems incredible that his life-long exile was 



31 

based upon simply political reasons. For some 
reason, perhaps now accurately undiscoverable, 
the poet seems to have earned the execration of 
the people of his native city of all political par- 
ties, since each of the principal factions was in 
power during his exile — and this makes possible 
the belief that his malfeasances in office were the 
ground of his permanent exile. 

The testimony of the witness, Michel Mol'- 
loni, the proprietor of the wine house which was 
a center of political influence, whose evidence I 
first quoted, and who figures also in the testi- 
mony of others, indicates that six hundred years 
ago, as in our own time, a potent factor in city 
affairs was the saloon in politics. The name 
Mol'loni has the appearance of an Italian name, 
but accidentally placing the accent on the mid- 
dle syllable instead of the first gave it such an 
Hibernian sound, that I was tempted to an in- 
vestigation, which made clear the fact that he 
was a native of the Emerald Isle, originally bap- 
tized as Michael Maloney. He was born in 
Limerick, of poor but Irish parents, ran away 
while young and went to sea, and after sundry 



32 

vicissitudes of fortune, located in Florence, be- 
came a power in politics, and may have been 
perhaps the inciter of Dante's fall from grace. 
A reference to our own age again emphasizes 
the maxim, " History repeats itself." 

II 

Assuming now that Dante was guilty of the 
crimes charged against him, it would seem a 
pertinent inquiry: in what way the entire change, 
which came over his fortunes after his banishment, 
affected his literary career. He was early in- 
clined to the profession of letters, the " Vita 
Nuova " being issued in his twenty-fifth year. 
It is of value as illustrating the early period of 
his mental development, and the starting point 
of his subsequent growth, but it is the immature 
work of an unpracticed hand. Had he written 
nothing more, it would have scarcely survived 
his century, as it has little in matter or manner 
to distinguish it from the short-lived work of 
his contemporaries. It combines much of gen- 
uine sentiment with much mystical folly; it 



33 
dilates upon love in the chivalric and conven- 
tional mode of his day; is pathetic in its youth- 
ful foolishness and poetic, dreamy extravagances. 
It illustrates that the passion of love, while soft- 
ening the heart, sometimes similarly affects the 
brain. 

Prior to his banishment, Dante appears to 
have been a genial, companionable and scholarly 
gentleman, according to the standpoint of his 
period, with literary tendencies in accord with 
the tastes and standards of an artificial and 
Quixotic age. He was popular with his towns- 
men, as is evidenced by his elevation to munici- 
pal office, and to his occasional selection for 
work of a diplomatic character among the neigh- 
boring petty commonwealths. He seems to 
have felt that his world was a pleasant one in 
which to live; that his surroundings were to his 
mind, and to have looked forward to a life of 
dignified ease, at peace with all men. No trace 
of his vivid descriptive power, or the intense 
bitterness toward those differing with himself is 
found in the period before his exile. In a way, 
for all his life he was a poetic dreamer, in early 



34 

life his dreams were of the Vita Nuova, in his later 
life, the fearsome visions of the Sacred Comedy. 
The beginning of his exile is the beginning 
of his great career. He traveled over many- 
lands, studying for the work of his life, not alone 
the fierce and evil passions and acts of men, 
with the poet's sweetness turned to fiery scorn- 
ing, but, too, with the poet's eye and the poet's 
power, seeing among all the scenes of his wan- 
dering the beauties of nature. In the Apen- 
nines he recognized the rafters of Italy. He 
saw the beavers' ways in the streams of Germany. 
He studied the shape of the bubbles on the boil- 
ing tar, for the calking of ships, in the arsenals 
of Venice, and reproduced them in one of the 
fissures of Malebolge, where a certain class of 
sinners were immersed in boiling pitch, while 
the devils tore their bodies if any part appeared 
above the surface. He heard the music of the 
spheres as he watched the stars in their stately 
courses. He heard the leaves of the trees, 
played upon by the wandering breezes, sing 
their accompaniment to the songs of birds. 
Nothing great or small escaped his intense and 



35 
concentrated vision, and his garnerings are pre- 
served in the Divine Comedy, "safe against the 
wash and wear of the ages." Trifling incidents 
in the lives of insignificant persons, passed out 
of human importance for six centuries, are alive 
and cannot perish, from their mere momentary 
connection with the thought of this one man. 

As his period of exile lengthened he left behind 
him, with one exception — the supremacy of the 
passion of human love — the ideals of his dream- 
ing youth, and girded himself for his mighty 
and slowly-maturing plan of unfolding to men 
the methods of the Power in whose hands are 
the [issues of life and death and immortality. 
Had his life been one of tranquil ease, had he 
never experienced toward himself what he 
deemed the base ingratitude and evil passions 
of men, the Divine Comedy might never have 
seen the light. The work to which he had 
vowed himself in his dreaming youth, that he 
would say of Beatrice what had never been said 
of any woman, might have given us Beatrice 
among the angels in Paradise, without the cantos 
of Hell and Purgatory. 



36 

While it is true that Dante, although nine- 
teen years an exile, was ever homesick and long- 
ing for his beloved Florence, yet his travels and 
his mingling with men, in certain lines, greatly 
broadened his views. In early life he was natu- 
rally a Roman Catholic, and so remained, yet he 
was perhaps the first advocate for the absolute 
separation of the Church and State. He wished 
to see Italy consolidated into one powerful king- 
dom, with its capitol at Rome, and the Pope, 
with his residence also at Rome, simply the 
head of the Church, a change which it required 
nearly six centuries to bring about. He also 
came to recognize the wickedness of sundry 
Popes in their management of temporal affairs, 
and located them in some of the least desirable 
circles of Hell. He also disputed the dogma 
then held almost universally, that all pagans 
were doomed to eternal death, even if living 
blameless lives and in total ignorance of the 
very existence of Christ. His utterances on this 
point are far in advance of his age. He says, as 
translated by Longfellow: 



37 
" For saidst thou, Born a man is on the shore 
Of Indus, and is none who there can speak 
Of Christ, nor who can read nor who can write: 
And all his inclinations and his actions 
Are good as far as Human reason sees, 
Without a sin in life or in discourse. 
He dieth unbaptized and without faith: 
Where is this justice that condemneth him? 
Where is his fault if he doth not believe? 
Now who art thou that on the bench would sit 
In judgment at a thousand miles away. 
With the short vision of a single span?" 

Again he says: 

"But look thou — many crying are Christ, Christ, 
Who at the judgment shall be far less near 
To him than some shall be who know not Christ. 
Such Christians shall the Ethiop condemn, 
When the two companies shall be divided, 
The one forever rich, the other poor." 

These and other passages indicate that upon 
the poet's vision had dawned the sublime con- 
viction that in the Father's house are many 
mansions. 

At about the age of twenty-six years he was 
married to Gemma Donati, a woman of social 
position superior to his own, and of whom his 



38 

contemporaries have to say naught but words of 
kindness and praise. The marriage was appar- 
ently a happy one and seven children were born 
to them. From the date of the decree which 
banished him and confiscated his property in 
Florence, we know of no communication between 
him and his loyal wife. If from his position as 
Prior he had harvested illicit gains, he must 
have carried them away, as Boccaccio and others 
of her contemporaries speak of the poverty of 
his wife and her weary struggles to support her- 
self and her seven children, but amid all, with 
no thoughts or words save of love for her absent 
lord. By her life and work she seems to have 
said to him: 

" Go forth, go upward and onward, my 
great, noble and heroic husband; from 
the trifles which escaped confiscation, 
from occasional slight help from my fam- 
ily, and from what I can earn by taking 
in washing, I will manage to care for my- 
self and our seven children, while you, 
with your head among the stars, with 
your mighty poetic spirit communing 
with itself of the problems of human des- 



39 

tiny, shall picture to all coming ages the 
divine beauty, the womanly perfections, 
the angelic graces, and the celestial bles- 
sedness of Beatrice, wearing upon her 
bosom the pure white rose of a blameless 
life, and dwelling and ruling forever in 
the very city of our God." 

From what has been said, we may fairly con- 
clude, therefore, that to the boodling of Dante 
and his consequent exile, we owe his master- 
piece of poetic effort, one of the greatest heir- 
looms of mankind. He embarked upon the 
work with two ideas especially before him: one 
to set forth the punishments of all the wicked, 
and in this class he places all opposing himself, 
and the other, to say of Beatrice, the ideal of 
his dreaming youth, whose name he would make 
to dwell lovingly and forever on the tongues of 
men, what had never yet been said of any woman. 
Upon the point first had in view by Dante, his 
ideas of punishment for sin were substantially 
those of the theology of his age. He classified 
sinners with a minuteness never before attempted, 
and sought, doubtless honestly, to make the 



40 

punishment fit the crime. In the character of 
these punishments, he shows a fiendish brutality, 
unequaled among any savages of whom history 
makes mention, and this, too, as he explains, 
upon the behest of the God of infinite mercy, 
and in evidence of His love for man. Over 
the portals of Hell he inscribes the words, 

"Justice the founder of my fabric moved. 
To rear me was thie task of power divine, 
Supremest wisdom and primeval love." 

He was a magnificent hater. He rejoices in 
the endless torments of his enemies. He asks 
Virgil, his guide, to have Philip Argenti plunged 
into the loathsome current of the Styx, and 
when it is done, thanks God for the pleasure of 
the view, and tells the wretched sufferer of his 
rejoicings at his torment. He sees Bocca's head 
partly projecting above the ice in which he is 
frozen, and kicks it and tears handfuls of hair 
from his bleeding scalp, and glories in the act. 
He rejoices when he sees certain sinners bitten 
and strangled by poisonous serpents, and others 
torn and bleeding from the bites of ferocious 
dogs, and still others permanently frozen or 



41 
roasted, by which their agonies are promoted. 
He is jubilant at the decrees which condemn 
uncounted myriads forever 

"To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice." 

But amid all these terrific pictures, the artist 
and poet is ever present and supreme. His 
views of the horrors of the Inferno are set forth 
in lines and phrases of transcendent and eternal 
beauty, and its blackest depths illumined by the 
clear light of his exquisite fancy. Even, too, in 
the Inferno, is seen one trace of his reverence 
for the passion of human love, told in the digres- 
sion embodying the story of Francesca De 
Rimini, whom, with her lover, Paoli, he sees 

" Imprisoned in the viewless wind, 
And blown with restless violence round about 
The pendant globe." 

His sense of justice would not allow him to 
overlook or excuse her crime, and she is placed 
in hopeless sorrow, but in one of the highest and 
most endurable circles of the Inferno and in 
the constant society of the only man she ever 
loved. How her piteous story biased Dante is 



42 

seen when he puts approvingly on her lips the 
final word, as to herself, her lover, and her hus- 
band who had murdered both: 

"Love brought us to one death — Caina waits 
The soul who spilt our life;" 

Caina being one of the lower and most terrible 
circles of the infernal pit. This story is told by 
the poet in words of such exquisite beauty and 
tenderness that it is known of all the world, and 
gentle eyes have never ceased to weep over the 
piteous tragedy of Francesca's life and love and 
death. 

There is one notable difference between Dante 
and the two other supreme poets. Homer no- 
where in his writings reveals his personality. 
His style is his own, but of his tastes, his sur- 
roundings and his loves or hates, we know 
nothing. Outside the sonnets, the same is true 
of Shakespeare. But Dante is everywhere in 
evidence. Scarcely a page of the Divine Com- 
edy but gives us a view of some phase of his 
unique personality. His exile had filled him 
with bitterness toward those who opposed him; 
he had reflected deeply upon the woes of Flor- 



43 
ence and Italy; upon the mismanagement of 
the State; upon the corruption and weakness of 
its public men, and as he recognized himself 
the sole official topographer of the Medieval 
Hell, he meted out justice, according to his own 
standard, to all weak and wicked men. Upon 
his personal enemies he wreaked exemplary- 
vengeance. In one notable instance he did not 
even await the death of the sinner before locat- 
ing him in what he considered his proper envi- 
ronment. Pope Boniface VIII was believed by 
Dante to have been in some measure responsible 
for his exile, as well as an embezzler of the funds 
of the Church, and Dante provided a place for 
his suitable reception as soon as he should pass 
without this earthly life. A pocket was awaiting 
him, about the size of his person, in the redhot 
rock, and here he was to stand upon his head 
through the eternal ages, his blazing feet pro- 
jecting above the pocket and aiding to make 
luminous the lurid atmosphere of Hell. 

Dante's Hell is not an original creation, but a 
composite picture, gathered from the theologies 
of all ages and races, largely from ancient Jew- 



44 

ish traditions, from the pagan poets and from 
the legends of Germany. Its fiends and devils, 
its inhabitants, its climate and its somber hor- 
rors, are reduced to order by the poet, who sup- 
plemented from his own teeming brain whatever 
it had before lacked in temperature and variety 
of torment. 

The second point had in mind by the poet, 
after having provided for the punishment of the 
wicked and his personal vengeance on his ene- 
mies, may be styled the apotheosis of Beatrice, 
and through her, of womankind. His work in 
this field may also, with much plausibility, be 
claimed as a result of his illicit lucre and conse- 
quent banishment. Beatrice died when the poet 
was about twenty-four years of age. Soon after 
her death, he was married and seems to have 
lived happily with his family, to have prospered 
in his ambitions, and to have led a contented 
life for nearly a dozen years. His early vow to 
say great words of Beatrice seems to have been 
forgotten. But in his lonely exile, his mind 
reverted with more than its youthful devotion to 
his early love. While he had never touched her 



45 
hand, or heard her voice, she was to him hence- 
forth the guide of his feet and the light of his 
life. She alone survived from the bright illu- 
sions of his dreaming youth. When all things 
else were powerless to console, this ideal of his 
youth and this memory of his maturity arose be- 
fore him to cheer and strengthen for the work 
of his life. He endows her with beauty, purity, 
strength, and all the attributes of an ideal and 
perfect womanhood, magnified and emphasized 
by her abode in the heavenly life. He places 
her in the Rose of the Blessed, and with the 
most exalted ones of the heavenly state, having 
power over angels and archangels, ruling by the 
love which casts out fear, yet evermore a woman. 
Knowing all things, she realized Dante's love; 
at the beginning of his marvelous journey, she 
gives him Virgil as his guide, and thus guards 
him through the horrors of Hell and Purgatory, 
triumphant over fiends and devils by her made 
powerless to do him harm. At the gateway of 
Paradise she meets him, and together they view 
the immeasurable splendors of the abode of the 
blest. He places her far above any man in 



46 

power and dignity in Paradise, thus avowing 
his belief in the higher purity and spirituality of 
woman and making all womankind his debtor. 
He quotes as descriptive of her from the Wis- 
dom of Solomon: "She is the brightness of 
the eternal light, the unspotted mirror of the 
majesty of God." Lowell, in referring to 
Dante's characterization of Beatrice, says: "She 
shifts from a woman, real, loved and lost, to a 
gracious exhalation of all that is fairest in 
womanhood or most divine in the soul of man." 
Well and nobly has Dante redeemed his vow, 
recorded in the closing pages of the Vita Nuova, 
that he would say of Beatrice what had never yet 
been said of any woman. 



Ill 

To the past we must look for guidance and 
for hope as to the present and the future. 
Dante, young, honest, pure, and at home, was 
the writer of love sonnets, graceful, conven- 
tional, trite, and of but modest merit. Dante, 
the boodler and exile, was the author of the one 



47 
poem of supreme merit between Homer and 
Shakespeare — the one great master for two 
thousand years. Can we derive from this fact 
aught of consolation and of hope for American 
letters? Can we see from what surroundings, 
from what experiences, from what fiery trials 
shall be born our man who shall rank unchal- 
lenged among the immortals? Who shall sing 
of our age with the simplicity and power of 
Homer, with the sweetness and fierce sublimity of 
Dante, with the broad humanity of Shakespeare? 
Of one factor we are assured: our boodlers 
are unsurpassed. Some, too, have been tempo- 
rarily exiled, but thus far without results in the 
world of literary art. Tweed, in comparison with 
whose boodling Dante was as a little child, was 
temporarily an exile, but the comity of nations 
returned him to his native land, and he died 
with his songs unsung, with the epic of the cen- 
tury unwritten. Chicago, the city of our love 
and pride, has banished some few of her bood- 
lers to Joliet, but thus far no poetic melodies 
have been wafted back to us from the city of 
limestone and the Drainage Canal. 



48 

Our assortment of unbanished boodlers is 
large and varied, but who of them has given to 
us the preliminary dainty volumes of love and 
pathetic longing, as the Vita Nuova in the case 
of Dante, which might be as stepping-stones to 
higher things? Who has seen a volume, "Bu- 
colics of Chickens and Turkeys," by Powers? or 
"Lyrics of Tunnels and the Levee," by Hop- 
kins? or "Ballads of Railroad Upholding," by 
Madden? or " Madrigals of the Franchise," by 
Cullerton? or "Dewdrops and Bubbles from the 
Bath House," by Coughlin? or " Poems of Pas- 
sion," by Yerkes? 

But we live not as those without hope. We 
are young. Art is long. 



APPENDIX 

The opening sentences of the decree of Janu- 
ary 27, 1302, are as follows : 

" In nomine Domini, amen. 

Hec sunt condempnationes sive condempnationunr 
sententie, facte late et promulgate per nobilem et 
potentem militem dominum Cantem de Gabriellibus 
de Eugubio, honorabilem Potestatem civitatis Flor- 
entie, super infrascriptis excessibus et delictis contra 
infrascriptos homines et personas. Sub examine 
sapientis et discreti viri domini Pauli de Eugubio, 
ludicis ipsius domini Potestatis ad offitium super 
baratteriis, iniquis extorsionibus et lucris illicitis 
deputati. Et de voluntate et consilio aliorum ludi- 
cum eiusdem domini Potestatis. Et scripte per me 
Bonoram de Pregio, prefati domini Potestatis 
notarium et offitialem et Communis Florentie, ad 
idem offitium deputatum. Currentibus annis Domini 
millesimo ccc ij, indictione xv, tempore sanctissimi 
patris domini Bonifatii pape octavi." * * * 



After a voluminous recital the decree con- 
cludes as follows : 

49 



50 

"Qui Dominus Palmerius 

DANTE 

Orlanduccius et 

Lippus 
citati et requisiti fuerunt legiptiine, per nuntium 
Communis Florentie, ut certo termino, iam elapso, 
coram nobis et nostra curia comparere deberent ac 
venire, ipsi et quilibet ipsorum, ad parendum man- 
datis nostris, et ad se defendendum et excusandum 
ab inquisitione premissa: et non venerunt, sed potius 
fuerunt passi se in bapno poni Communis Florentie 
de libris quinque milibus florenorum parvorum pro 
quolibet, per Duccium Francisci publicum bampni- 
torem Communis eiusdem; in quod incurrerunt se 
contumaciter absentando, prout de predictis omnibus 
in actis nostre Curie plenius continetur. 

" Idcirco ipsos dominum Palmerium, DANTE, 
Orlanduccium et Lippum, et ipsorum quemlibet, ut 
sate messis iuxta qualitatem seminis fructum per- 
cipiant, et iuxta merita commissa per ipsos dignis 
meritorum retributionibus munerentur, propter ip- 
sorum contumaciam habitos pro confessis, secundum 
forman iuris, Statutorum Communis et Populi civita- 
tis Florentie, Ordinamentorum lustitie, Reforma- 
tionum, et ex vigore nostri arbitrii, in libris quinque 
milibus florenorum parvorum pro quolibet, dandis et 
solvendis Camerariis Communis Florentie recipienti- 
bus pro ipso Communi; et quod restituant extorta 
inlicite probantibus illud legiptime; et quod si non 
solverint condempnationem infra tertiam diem, a die 
sententie computandam, omnia bona talis non sol- 
ventis publicentur vastentur et destruantur, et vastata 
et destructa remaneant in Communi; et si solverint 



51 

condempnationem predictam, ipsi vel ipsorum aliquis 
talis solvens nicchilominus stare debeat extraprovin- 
ciam Tuscie ad confines duobus annis; et ut predic- 
torum domini Palmerii, Dante, Lippi et Orlanduccii 
perpetua fiat memoria, nomina eorum scribantur in 
Statutis Populi, et tamquam falsarii et barattarii nullo 
tempore possint habere aliquod offitium vel bene- 
fitium pro Communi, vel a Communi, Florentie, in 
civitate comitatu vel districtu vel alibi, sive condemp- 
nationem solverint sive non; in hiis scriptis sententia- 
liter condempnamus. Computato bampno in con- 
dempnatione presenti." * * * 

Decree of January 27, 1302. From the Libro del 
Chiodo. See Del Lungo, DelV esilio di Dante, pp. 
97-103. (DANTE SOCIETY. Tenth annual report. 
May 19, 1891. Cambridge: University Press. 1891. 
p. 48.) 

The second decree being much shorter than 
the first, is here given in full : 

" In nomine Domini, amen. 

Hec est quedam condempnatio, sive condempna- 
tionis sententia, facta lata et promulgata per nobilem 
et potentem militem dominum Cantem de Gabrielli- 
bus de Eugubio, honorabilem Potestatem Civitatis 
Florentie, contra infrascriptos homines et personas. 
Sub examine sapientis et discreti viri domini Paulide 
Eugubio, ludicis ad offitium inquirendi et procedendi 
contra committentes barattarias et lucra illicitadepu- 
tati. Et scripta per me Bonoram de Pregio, eiusdem 
domini Potestatis et Communis Florentie notarium, 
ad idem offitium deputatum. In anno Domini mil- 



52 

lesimo trecentesimo secundo a nativitate, tempore 
domini Bonifatii pape viij, indictione XV. 

" Nos Cante Potestas predictus inf rascriptam con- 
dempnationis sententiam damus et proferimus in 
hunc modum. 

Dominum Palmerium de Altovitis. 

Lippum Becche. 

DANTEM ALLIGHIERII. 

Orlanduccium Orlandi. 

Contra quos processum est per inquisitionem ex 
nostro offitio et curie nostra factam super eo et ex eo, 
quod ad aures nostras et ipsius curie nostre prevenit, 
fama publica precedente, quod cum ipsi et eorum 
quilibet, nomine et occasione barattarium, iniquarum 
extorsionum et illicitorum lucrorum fuerint con- 
dempnati, et in ipsis condempnationibus docetur 
apertius, condempnationes easdem ipsi, vel eorum 
aliquis, termino assignato non solverint. Qui omnes 
et singuli per numptium Communis Florentie citati 
et requisiti fuerunt legiptime, ut certo termino, iam 
elapso, mandatis nostris parituri venire deberent, et 
se a premissa inquisitione protinus excusarent. Qui 
non venientes per Clarum Clarissimi publicum bamp- 
nitorem poni se in bampno Communis Florentie sub- 
stulerunt: in quod incurrentes eosdem assentatio 
contumacia innodavit, ut hec omnia nostre curie 
latius acta tenent. Ipsos et ipsorum quemlibet, ideo 
habitos ex ipsorum contumacia pro confessis, secun- 
dum iura, Statuta et ordinamenta Communis et 
Populi civitatis Florentie, Ordinamenta lustitie, etex 
vigore nostri arbitrii, et omni modo et iure quibus 
melius possumus, ut si quis predictorum ullo tem- 
pore in fortiam dicti Communis pervenerit, talis per- 



53 

veniens igne comburatur sic quod moriatur, in hiis 
scriptis sententialiter condempnamus. 

" Lata pronumptiata et promulgata fuit dicta con- 
dempnationis sententia per dominum Cantem Potes- 
tatem predictum pro tribunali sedentem in Consilio 
geneiali Communis Florentie, et lecta per me Bon- 
oram notarium supradictum, sub anno tempore et 
indictione predictis, die decimo mensis martii, pre- 
sentibus testibus ser Massaio de Eugubio et ser Ber- 
ardo de Camerino notario dicti domini Protestatis, et 
pluribus aliis in eodem Consilio existentibus." 

Decree of March lo, 1302. From the Libra del 
Chiodo. See Del Lungo, DelV esilio di Dante, pp. 
104-106.) (DANTE SOCIETY. Tenth annual report. 
May 19, 1891. Cambridge: University Press. 1891. 
P- 52-) 



SOME METHODS OF BROWNING, 
AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE POEM 
OF IVAN IVANOVITCH 



SOME METHODS OF BROWNING, 
AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE POEM 
OF IVAN IVANOVITCH 

No person at all familiar with the poetry of 
our time can question the right of Robert 
Browning to be enrolled upon the list of the 
Great Masters. Some of his shorter poems, 
thickly inwrought with exquisite fancies, are as 
full of rhythmical melody, and poetic beauty 
as any in our language. Had he published 
nothing more than the gems, "Rabbi Ben 
Ezra," "Saul," and "Prospice," his fame would 
have been unquestioned and secure. 

I have, however, been prejudiced somewhat 
against Browning from the very fact that he has 
written poems of such rare and transparent 
beauty, and that having done this, he has yet 
written vastly more, the meaning of which no 
one can discover. Were all his writings of this 
57 



58 

latter class, we would be obliged to accept them 
as the method in which his mind worked, and 
the question would then be, as suggested by the 
elder Weller to his son Samuel regarding mar- 
riage, whether it were worth while to go through 
so much to learn so little, as we must in the 
study of his more incomprehensible works. But 
the fact that he has written in such a lucid and 
beautiful style, it has seemed to me, renders him 
without excuse for writing in any other. Many 
of the inhabitants of England and America 
have something else to do than to study Brown- 
ing, but taking into account his dense and in- 
comprehensible style and methods, for one who 
proposes to understand him life is too short to 
accomplish anything else. 

In the study of many of his alleged poems, 
his disciples must plunge into a vast bank of 
fog, where they wander about like ghosts, seek- 
ing for light and finding none, hearing the 
voices of each other, the sighing of the winds, 
the barking of dogs, the murmur of falling 
waters, and the occasional resonant tones of a 
great organ echoing vaguely through the dark- 



59 
ness, and each disciple attaching to the faint 
and confused sounds and echoes, and the rare 
gleams, not of light, but of a lesser darkness, a 
meaning of his own. 

P>om some of my most valued friends, how- 
ever, who are enthusiastic seekers after the 
occult beauties of Browning, invisible to the 
hoi polloi, but revealed at times to the inner cir- 
cle of the elect, I learn that my impressions are 
altogether wrong, and that the reason why some 
of the poems of Browning are more obscure 
than others is owing to his wonderful faculty 
and power of concentration. 

A great mathematician, like La Place or New- 
ton, is not usually a good teacher, because, in 
the rapid working of his mind, he skips over 
various intermediate steps or processes, which, 
to the common mind, are necessary in order to 
reach and grasp his conclusion. In the same 
way, Browning condenses into a line or two, 
what it might take the ordinary poet a page to 
express. In this process of concentration a 
certain amount of clearness and simplicity is 
lost, and the intermediate steps by which his 



6o 

conclusions are reached must be wrought out by 
patient study. 

Many of us have probably seen, in the coun- 
try, in the days of our youth, an old-fashioned 
cider mill. The apples were ground into a 
reservoir, above which was a large screw. This 
screw, being turned by a long lever, slowly 
forced down a cover upon the contents of the 
reservoir. In this way the cider would gradu- 
ally be squeezed out of the pulpy mass; at first 
coming out quite freely, afterward more and 
more slowly as the bottom of the reservoir was 
approached, until, finally, its flow would stop 
altogether and nothing be left in the reservoir, 
except the skins, hulls, and seeds of the apples, 
substantially devoid of any moisture. I have 
used this somewhat rude, but familiar, simile to 
illustrate the mental processes of Browning in 
the production of certain of his poems. By 
the testimony of his admirers, the mind of this 
Master of sublimest song is originally full of 
the most beautiful imagery, of melody, rhythm, 
and all things essential to the evolution of 



6i 

poetry of the highest class; poems which would 
rank with those in which 

" Sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, 
Utters his native wood notes wild." 

This material is luminous from the flames of a 
chastened fancy and dominated by a sovereign 
imagination. While in this condition, he writes 
poems like "The Lost Leader," " Childe Ro- 
land," " One Word More," and " Evelyn Hope." 
But, appreciating that such poetry is too diffuse 
to be thoroughly artistic, he seizes the lever and 
gives the concentrating screw a turn or two. 
This squeezes out of the mass fancy and imagi- 
nation, which are the most evanescent and most 
easily parted with. In this condition he pro- 
duces poems like " Ivan Ivanovitch," devoid of 
fancy, but readily comprehended, and possess- 
ing a certain amount of poetic imagery and 
power. Not satisfied with the amount of con- 
centration thus arrived at, another turn is given 
to the lever, and the poetic element is entirely 
squeezed out. In this condition he gives us 
"The Ring and the Book," certain portions of 



62 

"The Red Cotton Night Cap Country," and 
other works, which will readily be recalled, con- 
taining much psychological research and dys- 
peptic power, but devoid of any of the essen- 
tial elements of true poetry. Even this amount 
of concentration, however, is not always satis- 
factory, and still another turn is given to the 
lever, which results in driving all sense out of 
the crude material and leaving simply a gram- 
matically arranged and incongruous mass of 
words. A piece cut from this residuum is labeled 
"Sordello," and published, to the endless mysti- 
fication of humanity. This is emphatically the 
piece which passeth all understanding. 

By the aid of the simile I have used, the writ- 
ings of Browning may be divided into four 
classes: first those poems of true feeling, fanci- 
ful, melodious, and all animate with poetic har- 
mony and beauty; second, those from which the 
beauty, fancy and imagination have been elimi- 
nated; third, those from which the poetry has 
disappeared; and fourth, those from which all 
beauty, fancy, melody, poetry and sense have 
departed. The poem of "Ivan Ivanovitch," 



63 

which I have chosen to illustrate some of the 
methods of Browning's work, belongs, as before 
stated, in the second class. 

Inasmuch as my readers may not have recently 
seen the poem of " Ivan Ivanovitch," I will give 
a brief synopsis of the story. Ivan is a carpen- 
ter, a man of sturdy independence and good 
character, who has among his friends one Dmitri, 
also a carpenter, who has a family consisting of 
a wife and three children. Dmitri has been 
from home with his wife and children for some 
weeks in a village about a day's journey from 
the hamlet where both reside, the road between 
the two places being mostly through an unbroken 
wilderness. He is about starting for home with 
his family, when something occurs to prevent 
his returning with them; so his wife and the 
three children set out alone in a sledge drawn 
by one horse, and when passing through the 
forest are followed by a pack of wolves. The 
horse, and in the sledge the wife only, in an 
utterly exhausted condition, reach the village, 
and are surrounded by the villagers, one of 
whom is Ivan Ivanovitch, to whom the wife pro- 



64 

ceeds to tell her story, which is in substance, 
that a pack of wolves, frantic with hunger and 
thirsty for blood, pursued them through the for- 
est; they gained upon the horse and finally 
jumped upon the sleigh, carrying off first one 
of the children, which stayed the pack for a 
time; but that they still continued the pursuit, 
carrying off another of the children, and finally, 
in the same way, the babe, the last. The wife 
represents that she fought the wolves desperately, 
but was unable to prevent them from seizing 
the children. Something in her manner of 
reporting the tragedy, however; her unfavorable 
comments upon the character of the children 
first carried off, and some expressions used in 
her excitement when telling the story, satisfy 
Ivan that she flung off her children one by one 
to the wolves in order to save her own life. He 
raises his carpenter's axe after she has finished 
her story, and, without making any comment 
upon it, deliberately severs her head from her 
body, wipes the blood from his axe and walks 
to his own home. This incident causes great 
excitement among the villagers, who at once 



65 

assemble in mass meeting to discuss the situation. 
The legal authorities present consider the act of 
Ivan as murder, and that his life is forfeited, 
but the priest of the village, a man nearly one 
hundred years of age, and who has baptized 
and married all the villagers, and is in a way 
the pope of the community, expresses his own 
views that Ivan in his act has simply been the 
messenger of God; that motherhood is the high- 
est function and attribute of woman; that the wife 
should have unhesitatingly sacrificed her own life 
to save the lives of her children; that, as she has 
thus been false to her higher nature, she is a mon- 
ster and unworthy to live, and that the act of Ivan 
was an act of the highest justice and worthy of all 
commendation. The villagers concur in this 
sentiment and repair to Ivan's house, expecting 
to find him in terror of a summary judgment, 
instead of which he is carving some toys for the 
amusement of his children, and upon hearing 
the verdict of the community, simply responds 
with the statement that it could not be other- 
wise. 

It seems to be a peculiarity of most of the 



66 

great poets and dramatists, that they are not crea- 
tive in the direction of inventing their plots. 
They usually take a story or legend, which is 
in some measure familiar to their prospective 
readers, and make this the thread upon which 
to hang their thick-coming imaginings and fan- 
cies. Shakespeare and the dramatists of his 
time took the plots of many of their plays from 
the Chronicles of Holinshed and Froissart, or 
from collections of a similar character made by 
the French and Italians, and the great dramatic 
work of Goethe simply embodied in poetic form 
the legend of Faust, already familiar to the Ger- 
man people. Browning is no exception to this 
general rule. It is often an interesting study to 
compare a finished poem with the story upon 
which it is based, and to see what changes in the 
story itself, its denouement and incidents, are 
made by the poet to cause it to conform to his 
ideas of poetic or dramatic art. By noting these 
modifications, we can often get some idea of the 
processes in the mental workshops of these great 
Masters. I shall not attempt at this time to give 
an elaborate analysis of the poem of " Ivan Ivano- 



a 



67 

vitch " from any particular standpoint, but will 
content myself with giving from Holinshed's 
Chronicles the original story of " Ivan Ivano- 
vitch," that we may note the variations and 
departures therefrom by Mr. Browning in his 
treatment of the theme. In Holinshed the 
story is told as happening in the mountainous 
district of Wales, which, as we know, were wild 
and sparsely settled regions to a later date than 
almost any other part of the British Islands. 
The story is told of one Owen Ap Jones, that is, 
he plays the part assigned to Ivan Ivanovitch in 
Browning's story, and the woman who sacrifices 
her children to save her own life is the wife of 
Llewellyn Griffiths. The surname of Jones is 
an unusual one, less than one-half the inhabi- 
tants of Wales bearing this name, which fact 
renders it probable that the Jones of the Holin- 
shed legend was an ancestor of the Rev. Jenkin 
Lloyd Jones, the President of the Chicago 
Browning Club, and a diligent and enthusiastic 
student of the Master. Holinshed's narrative is 
as follows, the spelling being modernized: 

In the winter of this same year the good 



68 

King Rufus, after this sore and cruel battle, 
desiring to mightily augment his puissance 
before that the armies should again encounter 
together, did sojourn for certain weeks upon the 
shores of the bay anigh the city of Carnarvon. 
And upon a certain day, when he did attend to 
meet the heralds in the market-place, was brought 
before him Owen Ap Jones by the sheriff and a 
great concourse of people, some of whom did 
loudly clamor for his life, while many others 
walked speechless in great incertitude. Where- 
upon the King did demand the cause of their 
greediness for blood, and to know of the sin 
wherewith Owen Ap Jones was charged, to which 
the sheriff did reply in this wise: 

"Most honored Majesty, Llewellyn Griffiths 
had a wife and children four, who were journey- 
ing from Cardigan, where they had kinfolk, 
and were riding upon two asses through 
the forest upon the mountain hard by. The 
wife and two callow children were upon one 
ass, which was old and very kindly, and the 
two boys of larger growth were upon a young 
ass, indued with much speed and spirit. Sud- 



69 

denly from the dark forest came fierce wolves in 
great number, which did pursue the beasts with 
speed and much outcry. This day, at the hour 
of three, came into the town the wife alone 
upon the young and spirited ass, and did weep 
and wail without ceasing that her children had 
been devoured by the savage beasts; wherefore 
Owen Ap Jones, he being of kin to her husband 
and his loving friend, did seek of her the story 
of her dire calamity. Thereupon related she 
that, because her first-born son was brave and 
unwisely bold, when the wolves did press upon 
them, he did unmount from the ass and attacked 
them with his boar spear; but in vain, for incon- 
tinently was he devoured. At which sudden 
chance, his brother foolishly and recklessly ad- 
ventured after him, and likewise perished mis- 
erably. For a little space the wolves were thus 
stayed, fighting and feasting fiendishly over the 
brave first-born lads. Then took she the nimble 
ass and her two babes, and with an infinite deal of 
speed fled before the ravening fiends, but still 
they hasted sharply upon her, and the foremost 
wolf pitilessly snatched from her arms one, and 



70 

anon the other babe, whereby her bereavement 
was greater than she could bear, and she wailed 
sorely and said, * Owen Ap Jones, my husband 
his friend, gladly would I die and be at rest 
rather than meeting loved Llewellyn weeping 
for our children perished miserably.' Then up 
spake Owen Ap Jones, ' Woman, why sendest 
thou thy first-begotten children to perish un- 
timely?' To which she: 'I did it not. More- 
over, they ceaselessly quarreled and tried me 
grievously, and dearer to me were my loving 
babes.' Then again said Owen, ' Woman, why 
gavest thou these babes to the gaunt wolves that 
thine own life might not be forfeit?' To which 
she: 'I did it not. Furthermore, here standeth 
the priest, who will bear witness for me. By 
him was I wedded to Llewellyn my spouse, and 
before him made I my marriage vows, that I 
would be a true and loyal wife, and that, leaving 
all others, I would cleave to Llewellyn alone 
until grim death should take me to his arms. 
How could I cleave to Llewellyn if the fierce 
beasts devoured my body?' Then Owen Ap 
Jones bared his head of its wolfskin gear, and 



71 

bowing down, he said, ' It is as I divined. The 
fear of God is upon me, and I must do his 
behest.' Then quickly raised he his woodman's 
axe, and with one mighty blow he cleaved the 
woman's head in twain." 

Thus the sheriff, and for a brief space the 
King spake not, and then he said, "Sheriff, thou 
art wise in the wisdom which pertaineth to the 
law, what sayest thou?" and the sheriff answered, 
" Owen Ap Jones his hands are red with blood. 
His life is forfeit to the King; let him be hanged 
upon an oaken tree, or, manacled, labor until 
death in the copper mines of Carnarvon." 
Then said the King, "What sayest thou, O 
Priest?" and the priest answered, "The man is a 
blasphemer and stained with sin; to the anoint- 
ed priest alone it is to act as the vicegerant 
of God. Whoso sheds man's blood, by man 
shall his blood be shed." Then the King took 
in his arms a shepherd's little child, and said, 
"My little one, what sayest thou?" and the 
child answered, " My mother would not give me 
to the hungry wolves." 

Then up spoke the King in a loud voice: 



72 

"Oh, blind leaders of men, it is as of old, that 
wisdom cometh from the lips of sucklings and 
of babes. Know you not that to woman it is 
given to bear and to rear children for her hus- 
band and the realm; that not one of the she 
wolves of whom this woman spake betimes but 
would die for her whelps, and that Owen but 
cut down a witch and a devil, who should no 
longer cumber the earth? Owen Ap Jones, thou 
art a just man and my brother. Leave thy 
woodman's axe, and take this spear and bull's 
hide shield. Henceforth thou art the captain of 
a hundred men and shalt have forsooth broad 
acres of the lands, of which anon I will despoil 
mine enemies." 

Thus Holinshed. 

We observe that, in a general way. Browning 
has adhered to the legend as told by Holinshed, 
although he has transferred the scene to Russia, 
where such an incident would to-day seem less 
improbable than elsewhere. 

In comparing the story as told by Browning 
with the legend, we note three characteristics of 
the poet, which are illustrated by his method of 



73 
telling the story; his republicanism, his dramatic 
instinct, and his habit of passing over the inter- 
mediate steps in reaching a conclusion. Holin- 
shed, whose chronicles are largely the doings of 
kings, nobles, and warrior knights, so disposes 
his facts as to make King Rufus the central fig- 
ure, and to make conspicuous his sagacity, 
wisdom, and justice; but Browning's sturdy 
democracy is illustrated by his suppression of 
the monarch altogether, and by his bringing to 
the front the heroism and instinctive justice of 
the common people. Our admiration goes out 
to the lowly carpenter and the humble priest. 
Again, Browning is a born dramatist. The most 
dramatic portion of the story is perhaps the 
long-drawn agony of the flight from the wolves; 
the alternation of hopes and fears, as one after 
another of the children perish, thus delaying 
the pack and awakening anew, again and again, 
the vain hope of escaping with the rest. In 
Holinshed, this portion of the story is told in a 
few graphic words, but Browning expands and 
makes much of it in his rendition of the legend. 
On the other hand, he largely suppresses the 



74 
trial scene, wherein is sought to be established 
the guilt or innocence of the man and woman, 
the dramatis personae of the story. Holinshed 
gives in full the arguments of the sheriff, the 
priest, and the shepherd's child, together with 
the reasoning of the king, when pronouncing 
the verdict of the man's justification and the 
woman's guilt. Browning, however, noting the 
woman's disparaging criticism of her dead chil- 
dren, and coupling this with the fact that she is 
alive and her children are dead, passes over all 
intermediate reasoning; he calls for no proof of 
her guilt, finally and conclusively established as 
it is to him, from the evidence of her savage, 
weak, and unwomanly nature. 



LINES TO LAKE GENEVA 



LINES TO LAKE GENEVA 

Words attributed to Nathaniel K. Fairbank. Music 
by Frederick W. Root. 

Nestled amid thy circling bluffs, 

Thy banks all clad in palest green, 
In May, when first I visit thee, 

And view thy waters' silvery sheen, 
The springtime's breath is in the air. 

The trees pulsate with newborn life, — 
I say, some other months are fair, 

But May is first in friendly strife. 
The grass is green upon the hills, 

The lawns are bright with daffodils; 
All things new, sweet, and fresh are here, 

And May is queen of all the year. 

Time runs his course and ushers in 
The ever-welcome month of June; 

The perfume of uncounted flowers, 
The melody of birds in tune 
77 



78 

The richer verdure of the trees, 
The balmy air by day and night, 

Combine to pleasure every sense. 
And make a scene of pure delight. 

I say, of months the year has known, 
June is unrivaled and alone. 

I leave the city's stifling glare, 

When fierce July its advent makes, 
And seek thy shores, forever fair, 

Oh smiling Queen of all the lakes. 
The summer's breath is tempered here, 

The languors of this summer sea 
Drive every grief and care away. 

And make all hours from trouble free. 
I say, for pure, luxurious rest, 

July, of all the months, is best. 

Soon Autumn mirrors in thy breast, 
The glories of October hours, 

The crimson splendor of the trees. 
The golden beauty of the flowers. 

Fringed gentian and the goldenrod, 
In the bright sunshine fleck the sod. 



79 

Each month to thee new vesture brings, 
October bears the robes of kings; 

All vestments else, severe or gay, 
Are unto these as night to day. 

The year's drear close is drawing nigh, 

December comes with stormy sky; 
The feathery snow falls flake by flake 

Upon the bosom of the lake. 
Pearl-bordered are the tinkling rills, 

And ermine clad are all the hills. 
No other month has seemed to me, 

Type of such stainless purity. 
Each passing month has lessons taught, 

Each has its pain and pleasure brought, 
But the year's ending is sublime — 

December is the gem of Time. 

As some fair maiden, coy and sage, 
The daughter of a golden age, 

The radiant queen of all the earth. 
Which glories that it gave her birth; 

As, smiling, she the most doth shine; 
As, pensive, is still more divine — 



8o 

Whate'er emotion marks her brow, 
Or thrills her happy, loving breast, 

Her reign 's an ever-present now, 
And every hour her regal best. 

So Thou, Lake of my constant love, 

To praise alone my tongue can move. 
Spring brings its freshness and its showers, 

Summer its wealth of leaves and flowers; 
Autumn, with splendors never told, 

Decks thee in crimson and in gold; 
And winter robes thee all in white, 

Adorns with pearls and crystals bright — 
Each month is perfect in its time, 

And every day thy golden prime.* 



When Put and Call and Bull and Bear 
Furrow the brow and blanch the hair; 

When wheat a ten-cent drop has had. 
And lard is going to the bad; 

*Mr. Fairbank states that this ode was written at his Lake 
Geneva home, except the final stanza, which was produced after 
his return to Cliicago, thus accounting for the different spirit 
which pervades the closing stanza. 



8i 

When " Fairy " soap no more will sell, 

And Kirk all round is raising hell; 
Behind I leave the city's roar, 

And seek thy sweet and tranquil shore; 
And, floating on thy silvery breast, 

I taste the joys of heavenly rest. 
And let, if you'll excuse the slang, 

The Board and all the Boys "go hang." 



HEROISM COMMEMORATED 



HEROISM COMMEMORATED 

Address delivered at the unveiling of the monu- 
ment erected in Haymarket Square, Chicago, 
in commemoration of the heroic acts of the 
police force when attacked by a mob of 
anarchists. May 4, 1886. Monmnent ufi- 
veiled May jo, i88g. 

May 4, 1886, was a gloomy day in our history. 
Turbulent acts had occurred at several points 
within the city, and in the evening, upon the 
spot where we are standing, was an excited mul- 
titude listening to inflammatory harangues. A 
body of police came upon the ground to guard 
against possible disorder; a bomb was exploded; 
pistols were fired; blood was shed; lives were 
lost; the crowd was dispersed and order was 
restored. One of the consequences of this inci- 
dent is the assemblage here to-day and the dedi- 
cation of this monument. Had the occasion, 
85 



86 

however, been simply a conflict between the 
guardians of public order and an ordinary mob 
the occurrence would have deserved and would 
have received no such commemoration as this 
day has brought forth. It is because the out- 
break and consequent events represented a con- 
flict of ideas and principles that it became a 
matter of world-wide interest and formed an 
epoch in the history of Chicago and the Nation. 
Four hundred years ago the Supreme Being 
is represented by Emerson as saying, through 
the discoveries of Columbus: 

" Lo, I uncover the land 
Which I hid of old time in the West, 
As the sculptor uncovers his statue 
When he has wrought his best." 

Here was a new continent, unhampered by 
traditions or royal lines, where man might hope 
to work out new theories and methods of gov- 
ernment which should work for the greatest 
happiness of the people. The highest achieve- 
ment of civilization consists in securing to every 
man the fruits of his labor and the freedom to 
labor and to sell his labor or ability in whatever 



87 
way he deems most to his advantage. Some 
form of government is indispensable, and that 
government is best which least interferes with 
the individual and which takes from him for its 
support the smallest percentage of his earnings. 
The more advanced nations of the Old World 
are still burdened with vast national debts, 
mostly incurred for the founding or upholding 
of certain dynasties, or for other matters in 
which the people have no interest. They are 
burdened, too, with the support of standing 
armies, in which a large proportion of the active 
young men of each nation are compelled to 
serve for the best years of their lives, substan- 
tially without compensation, and are supported 
in idleness by taxes laid upon the remainder of 
the people. 

These oppressions are so great that we witness 
and have witnessed for a generation past con- 
stant emigration from those countries to this 
favored land, where the newcomers realize that 
they are freed from the crushing burdens resting 
upon them in their fatherlands. The colonial 
period of our history represents the boyhood of 



88 

the Nation. For nearly two centuries our ances- 
tors were putting off the traditions and limita- 
tions which they had inherited from the peoples 
and dynasties of the Old World. They came 
of age, won their independence, and, one hun- 
dred years ago, organized the first Government 
by the people and for the people, of continental 
magnitude, which the world had known. 

Would the experiment be successful? Could 
a people govern themselves when spread over a 
continent with varying climates, conditions, and 
industries? These were the questions to be 
answered. We ourselves answered them one 
month ago this day by a jubilee from Maine to 
the far-off coast of Oregon; by rejoicings which 
were participated in not alone by our own people, 
but by the lovers of liberty in all lands; by 
praise to Him who holds in His invisible hand 
the destinies of men, in a paean which followed 
the sun in its course around the earth, and 
ascended in world-wide chorus from every con- 
tinent and from the islands of the sea. But 
these same questions were answered in the nega- 
tive by the political writers of all the older 



89 

nations, who insisted that a government by the 
people could never be maintained except in a 
small nationality and among a homogeneous 
people. They said, in so vast a country, the 
interests of some States would be maritime; 
some, commercial; some, agricultural; some in 
the line of manufacturing. They predicted three 
sources of fatal weakness in our Government; 
that diverse interests in a wide continent would 
cause certain States to ally themselves with for- 
eign nations in case of a foreign war; that a 
civil war would destroy our people from conflict- 
ing interests among the States themselves; and 
that if the country survived these trials the 
growth in wealth and population would give 
rise to classes and a servile war. 

The test of our experiment went on. We 
passed through wars with foreign nations tri- 
umphantly, and the first question was settled. 
Twenty-eight years ago came the test of the sec- 
ond question, the sectional strife. Many among 
us can remember how, for the integrity of the 
Great Republic, a million peaceful citizens left 
their homes, took up arms, and went forth to do 



9° 
battle that government by the people might not 
perish. We remember, too, how scarcely a 
household in the broad land but was a house of 
mourning; how saddened millions, crape clad, 
bewailed the slaughter of husbands, fathers, 
lovers, sons; how every great river flowed sol- 
emnly onward to the sea, red. with the dearest 
and costliest blood of the Nation. Government 
by the people came forth from the conflict 
strengthened and with a new and abounding 
life. 

But with the rapid growth of the Nation in 
wealth, prosperity, and population, with the ag- 
gregation of a miscellaneous people in our 
large cities, came the test of the third warning 
of the prophets of evil. Differences described 
by the absurd phrase, " The conflict of capital 
and labor," assumed momentous importance. 
Well-meaning people, troubled by the broad 
disparity in conditions of life, which thus far 
seems inseparable from our imperfect humanity, 
were joined by dangerous and criminal dema- 
gogues who denounced the existing order of 
things, and even clamored for the destruction 



91 
of all government. The right of revolution, 
whereby a majority of the people modify or 
overturn one form of government and substi- 
tute another therefor is sacred. But this princi- 
ple affords no protection to the enemies of all 
government; to the apostles of anarchy and 
disorder. A government instituted and carried 
forward by the people themselves, and deriving 
all its powers from the consent of the governed 
should be modified only by the methods of 
peace, by laboring for a change in public opin- 
ion, which is prompt to remedy a proved evil. 
Under a government by the people, any man 
who takes arms in his hands and goes forth to 
commit deeds of violence for the purpose of 
remedying what seems to him an unjust law; 
any person who counsels such acts of violence 
and advocates measures which may lead to the 
shedding of blood is simply a murderer, an out- 
law, an enemy of mankind, and one who puts in 
peril all the precious heritage of our one hun- 
dred years of national life. Our country stands 
to-day the sole guardian of all that is most val- 
uable of the results of human endeavor. It is 



92 

the trustee for the human race of the principles 
of free government, of the right and power of 
the people to govern themselves, of the right of 
freedom in the pursuit of happiness, won 
through uncounted ages of struggle and of toil. 
No portion of the civilized world will relapse 
into a condition of anarchy. Some form of 
government will exist. If a government by the 
people is not sufficiently strong and vital to pre- 
serve the public order, to protect human life, 
and to assure to its subjects the safe possession 
of their own, a strong, central government will 
necessarily be established. With this will come, 
should such a necessity be forced upon us as a 
people, the standing armies, the oppressive tax- 
ation, and the burdens grievous to be borne, to 
escape which, ourselves or our ancestors left 
homes in the Old World, sacrificing much that 
was most dear and precious, to aid in founding 
and perpetuating a government by the people. 
Those who would sanction courses which would 
make such results possible, claim to be actuated 
by sympathy for the laboring poor, but upon 
these same people would fall the greatest bur- 



93 
dens of the changed affairs. From among them 
come the men who make up the great armies of 
the Old World. It is their blood which is 
poured out like water in times of war. They, 
above all others, are interested in the preserva- 
tion of peace and order. It should be borne in 
mind that apostles of anarchy do not propose a 
modification of existing laws and institutions, 
but a wholesale destruction by violence and a 
throttling of all law. History would, as always, 
repeat itself; violence would beget violence, and 
crime would beget crime. All the powers and 
forces of evil would come again and inaugurate 
anew the reign of Chaos and Old Night. 

There is an expression we often hear in the 
discussion of social problems, "The laboring 
classes," which has no place in America. We 
all belong to the laboring class. We have no 
other class. We all labor in our various ways. 
The millionaires of thirty or forty years hence 
will be men who are now working for a dollar 
or two per day, just as the millionaires of to-day 
are men who, thirty or forty years ago, worked 
for fifty and seventy-five cents per day. We 



94 
have rich men and poor men, but there is a 
constant passing from one class to the other, 
and the door is always open. This fact is the 
reason why the evil prophecies of the Old 
World sages have come to naught. They ranked 
our laborers with the Helots of Greece, the rab- 
ble of Rome, the serfs of Russia; people for 
whom the future held no gleam of hope. 

Upon this spot, three years ago, it was demon- 
strated that the new peril which had arisen to 
the government by the people, was naught in 
the presence of a public sentiment as omnipo- 
tent as it was sublime. Certain people, mostly 
foreigners of brief residence among us, whose 
ideas of government were derived from their 
experience in despotic Germany, sought by 
means of violence and murder to inaugurate a 
carnival of crime. They took advantage of a 
time of agitation among honest workingmen 
and sought to commit them to their infernal 
scheme. It is worthy of note, however, that 
among the heroes who periled their lives to 
thwart the conspiracy of these criminals, while 
some were Americans to the manor born, many 



95 
were men who had come to us from lands be- 
yond the sea, who sought among us that free- 
dom to the preservation of which they conse- 
crated their lives; sons who loved the land of 
their adoption with a passionate loyalty and 
devotion. 

It is to the glory of Chicago that the enemies 
of public order were as chaff before a consum- 
ing fire. The civil authorities were represented 
by a police force of unexcelled heroism; by a 
detective force, which, under Bonfield and 
Schaack, laid bare all the details of an infamous 
conspiracy; by a prosecuting attorney, whom no 
intimidations could swerve from the path of 
duty; by a judge, who, undaunted by threats, 
held aloft, with an even poise, the scales of jus- 
tice; by a jury of the people, who saw clearly 
and well the vital principles which lay behind 
the overt acts. All these instrumentalities illus- 
trated that government by the people was tri- 
umphant, and equal to any emergency. The 
voice of all, rich and poor alike, has spoken 
with no uncertain sound of its adherence to the 
principles of peace and of its utter condemna- 



96 

tion of those who would resort to methods of 
violence for the accomplishment of a fancied 
good. 

There are crises in the world's affairs when 
immortal fame comes in a single hour to those 
whom opportunity has blest. The heroes who 
made up the little group of embattled farmers, 
which stood in the highway at Concord and 
fired the shot heard round the world, were no 
whit braver, nor more loyal than thousands of 
their compatriots in the old Bay State; but it 
was theirs to inaugurate the struggle which re- 
sulted in the birth of a Nation, and the echoes 
of that firing shall never die away. 

Greece could have furnished numerous bands 
of 300 men equally brave and patriotic as that 
of Leonidas; but the heroism of this Spartan 
band, whose fortune it was to stand in the pass 
at Thermopylae, and to check the mighty flood 
of Oriental barbarism, which, under Xerxes, 
sought the life of Grecian civilization, by this 
happy chance shall live forever. 

" Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of 
men." 



97 

We stand to-day upon another spot, which a 
crisis in man's progress has made historic. 
Three years ago, May 4th, an excited audience 
was here, listening to speakers who counseled 
acts of violence and crime. A force of police- 
men, under the command of the gallant Bon- 
field, a name long to be remembered and hon- 
ored, came forward as guardians of the public 
peace. The entire force consisted of seven 
companies under the command of Captains 
Bonfield and Ward, each company commanded 
by its own Lieutenant, and the seven compa- 
nies containing in all 176 men. Five compa- 
nies, those of Lieutenants Quinn, Steele, Stan- 
ton, Bowler, and Hubbard, our present efficient 
Chief, and numbering in all 120 men, were in 
the advance. Close behind were the companies 
of Lieutenants Penzon and Beard. They halted 
and, in the name of the law, commanded the 
riotous assemblage to disperse. 

Suddenly, and without warning, the fatal 
bomb was thrown into their midst, followed by 
a discharge from revolvers in the hands of the 
mob. Sixty-seven men from the force in an in- 



98 

stant were killed or wounded. In a conversa- 
tion with a gallant officer, who had served with 
distinction through the War of the Rebellion, 
he stated that he had never known or heard of 
an instance where so large a proportion of an 
attacking force had been disabled without re- 
sulting in its demoralization and retreat. But 
no such thought entered the minds of the brave 
heroes of the Hay market horror. The echo of 
the explosion had scarcely died away when the 
voices of Bonfield and Fitzpatrick rang out like 
a clarion, rallying their men to the unequal 
combat. Under the constant fire of the mob 
the lines were formed, the charge was made 
upon ten times their number, and the crowd 
was dispersed. Every policeman who was in 
the affray was a hero; every man had in him 
the material of which are made martyrs in the 
cause of duty. 

One company — that of the heroic Lieutenant 
Stanton, where, out of eighteen men, one was 
instantly killed and sixteen were wounded — 
rallied immediately and was at the front in the 
pursuit of the retreating rioters. Equally valiant 



99 

was the command of Lieutenant Bowler, where 
nineteen out of twenty-six men were wounded. 
It were vain to particularize where every one 
present earned our abiding gratitude. But 
there were certain of these men who bowed be- 
fore the imperious mandate of death — who have 
been borne to their rest in the equal grave — 
whom we must especially bear in remembrance 
— Degan, Miller, Barrett, Flavin, Sheehan, 
Hansen, Redden, Sullivan — martyrs and heroes 
all, to whom the municipality renders that hom- 
age which ennobles death. They are of those 
whose lives have been given to preserve the 
costly treasure of free government. No history 
of our State but will perpetuate the memory of 
those murdered heroes. Impartial fame will 
have them in her jealous care. 



LifC. 



PRINTED BY R. R. DONNELLEY 
AND SONS COMPANY AT THE 
LAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO, ILL. 



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